“You haven’t told her about your conversation with Vince, have you?”
“Hell, no. I’ve been trying to avoid her.”
“If you do talk to her, you might ask her about her good buddy, Officer Dolan.”
“Does that mean what I think it means?”
“I heard it from one of the reporters, Mitchell Groome. He saw them together.”
“I’ve already asked Mark whether he’s been talking to her. He absolutely denies it. I can’t take action against him without proof.”
“Do you trust his word?”
A pause. “I honestly don’t know, Claire,” he sighed. “Lately I’ve been learning things about my neighbors, about my friends, I never knew before. Things I didn’t want to know.” The anger faded from his voice. “I’m not calling to talk about Mark Dolan.”
“Why are you calling?”
“To talk about what happened last night. Between you and me.”
She closed her eyes, bracing herself to hear words of regret. Part of her wanted to be cut off, cut free. It meant she could leave this town without looking back, without struggling for the right decision.
But another part of her, the largest part, wanted him.
“Have you thought about what I said?” he asked. “About whether you’ll stay?”
“Are you still asking me to?”
“Yes.”
He said it without hesitation. He was not cutting her free, and she felt both joy and apprehension.
“I don’t know, Lincoln. I keep thinking of all the reasons I should leave this town.”
“What about all the reasons you should stay?”
“Besides you, what other reasons are there?”
“We can talk about it. I can come over now.”
She wanted him to come, but was afraid of what would happen if he did. Afraid that she’d make a premature decision, that just his presence alone would prove to be the most convincing argument of all for her to stay in Tranquility. So many things were driving her away. Just to look out her window, to see the impenetrable darkness of a November night and to know that that night is cold enough to kill …
“I can be there in ten minutes.”
She swallowed. Nodded to the empty room. “All right.”
The instant she hung up, a sense of panic seized her. Was she presentable? Was her hair combed, was the house tidy? She recognized these scattering thoughts for what they were, the feminine longing to impress one’s lover, and she was startled to be experiencing it at this late stage of her life. Middle age, she thought with a rueful smile, does not automatically confer dignity.
She deliberately avoided even a glance at her mirror, and went downstairs to the front parlor, where she forced herself to occupy the next moments building a fire in the hearth. If Lincoln insisted on paying a visit at this late hour, he’d have to be satisfied with what he found. A woman with soot on her hands and the smell of wood smoke in her hair. The real Claire Elliot, beleaguered and unglamorous. Let him see me this way, she thought rebelliously, and let’s see if he still wants me.
She lay down wood and kindling, then struck a match and touched the flame to the crumpled newspapers. The fire was well set and would burn without further attention, but she remained by the hearth, watching with primitive satisfaction as the kindling caught, and then the logs. The wood was fully seasoned and would burn hot and swift. She was like this wood, left dry and untouched for too long. She scarcely remembered what it was like to burn at all.
She heard him ring the doorbell. Instantly she was a bundle of nerves. She clapped her sooty hands, then rubbed them against her hips and succeeded only in transferring the soot to her slacks.
Let him see the real Claire. Let him decide if this is what he wants.
She went to the front hall, paused to regain her composure, and opened the door. “Come in,” she said.
“Hello, Claire,” he answered, equally at a loss for words. They just looked at each other for a second, then broke eye contact, gazes drifting off to safer territory. He stepped inside, and she saw that his jacket was dusted with fine snow, that the darkness outside swirled with a powdery whiteness, like mist.
She closed the door. “I’ve got a fire going in the other room. Can I hang up your jacket?”
He took it off and as she slipped it onto a hanger, she felt the heat of his body in the lining. So many times before, they had met, had spoken, yet this was the first time her awareness of him extended to all her senses, to the warmth of his body lingering in the jacket, to his scent of wood smoke and melting snow. To the certainty of knowing, even with her back turned, that at that moment, his gaze was on her.
She led the way into the parlor.
By now the fire was fully ablaze, throwing its bright circle of light against the gloom. Claire took a seat on the couch and turned off the lamp burning beside her. The fire gave off light enough; it was in shadow she sought refuge. Lincoln sat down beside her, a comfortable space apart, a statement of neutrality that did not distinguish between friend, lover, or mere acquaintance.
“How is Noah doing?” he finally asked, neutrality maintained even in conversation.
“He went to bed angry. In some ways, he wants to be a victim, he wants to feel like the world’s against him. There’s nothing I can do to change his mind.” She sighed and dropped her head against her hand. “For nine months he’s made me the villain for forcing him to move here. This afternoon, when I told him I was thinking of moving back to Baltimore, he blew up. Said I wasn’t thinking of his needs, what he wanted. No matter what I do, I can’t win. I can’t please him.”
“Then all you can do is please yourself.”
“It feels selfish.”
“Does it?”
“It feels as if I’m not being the best mother I could be.”
“I see you trying so hard, Claire. As hard as any parent could.” He paused, and sighed as well. “And now I suppose I’m throwing another complication into your life, at a time when you least need it. But Claire, there is no other time for me. I had to say it before you made a decision. Before you left Tranquility.” He added softly: “Before it’s too late for me to say anything at all.”
At last she looked at him. He was sitting with his gaze downcast, his head tilted wearily against his hand.
“Not that I blame you for wanting to leave,” he said. “This town is slow to warm up to strangers, slow to trust them. There are a few who are just plain mean. But for the most part, they’re like people everywhere else. Some of them are unbelievably generous. The best folks you could ever hope to find …” His voice faded to silence, as though he’d run out of things to say.
A moment passed between them.
“Are you speaking on behalf of the whole town again, Lincoln? Or yourself?”
He shook his head. “It’s not coming out right. I came to say something, and here I am, beating around the bush. I think about you a lot, Claire. The fact is, I think about you all the time. I’m not sure what to make of this, because it’s a new experience for me. Walking around with my head in the clouds.”
She smiled. For so long she had thought of him as the stoic Yankee, plain-spoken and practical. A man whose boots were planted too firmly on earth to ever lose his head to the clouds.
He rose to his feet and stood, unsure of himself, by the fire. “That’s all I came to tell you. I know there are complications. Doreen, mainly. And I know I don’t have any experience being a father. But I have all the patience in the world when it comes to things I really care about.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll let myself out.”
He had already gone to the closet door and was reaching for his jacket when she caught up to him in the front hall. She put her hand on his shoulder, and he turned to look at her. His jacket slipped from the hanger and fell, unnoticed, to the floor.
“Come back and sit with me.” That whispered request, the smile on her lips, was all the invitation he needed. He touched her face, caressed her cheek. S
he had forgotten what it felt like, the touch of a man’s hand against her flesh. It awakened a longing that was deep and unexpected and so powerful that she gave a sigh and closed her eyes. Gave another sigh as he kissed her, as their bodies folded into each other.
They kissed all the way to the front parlor and were still kissing as they sank onto the couch. In the hearth a log tipped over, and a shower of sparks and flames leapt up with startling brilliance. Seasoned wood makes the hottest fire. The heat of their own fire was consuming her now, reducing to ashes any resistance. They lay on the couch, bodies pressed together, hands exploring, discovering. She pulled his shirt loose and slid her hand across the breadth of his back. His skin there felt startlingly cool, as if all the heat he possessed was radiating toward her, in the kisses he pressed to her face, her throat. She unbuttoned his shirt, inhaling his scent. Those all-too-brief whiffs she’d had of him over the weeks had somehow been branded into her memory, and now the smell of him was both familiar and intoxicating.
“If we’re going to stop,” he murmured, “we’d better stop now.”
“I don’t want to stop.”
“I’m not ready—I mean, I didn’t come prepared”
“It’s all right. It’s all right,” she heard herself saying, without knowing or caring if it was all right, so hungry was she for the touch of him.
“Noah,” he said. “What if Noah wakes up …”
At that she opened her eyes and found herself looking directly into his. It was a view of him she’d never seen before, his face lit by the fire’s glow, his gaze stark with need.
“Upstairs,” she said. “My bedroom.”
Slowly he smiled. “Is there a lock on the door?”
They made love three times that night. The first was a mindless collision of bodies, limbs tangled together, then the shuddering explosion deep within. The second time was the slower coupling of lovers, gazes locked, the touch and scent of each other now familiar.
The third time they made love, it was to say good-bye.
They’d awakened in the hours before dawn, and knowingly reached for each other in the darkness. They spoke no words, their bodies joining of their own accord, two halves gliding together into one whole. When, in silence, he emptied himself into her, it was as though he was spilling tears of both joy and sorrow. The joy of having found her. The sorrow of what they would now have to face. Doreen’s wrath. Noah’s resistance. A town that might never accept her.
He did not want Noah to find them in bed together when morning came; neither he nor Claire was ready to deal with the repercussions. It was still dark when Lincoln got dressed and left the house.
From her bedroom window she watched his truck drive away. She heard the loud crackle of ice under his wheels and knew that the night had turned even colder, that this morning, to merely draw in a breath would be painful. For a long time, even after the taillights had vanished, she remained at the window, staring out through moonlit-silvered icicles. Already she felt his absence. And she felt something else, both unexpected and troubling: a mother’s guilt that she was selfishly pursuing her own needs, her own passions.
She walked down the hall to Noah’s door. There was silence within; knowing how deeply he slept, she felt certain he’d heard nothing of what had gone on in her bedroom last night. She stepped inside and crossed the darkness to kneel beside his bed.
When he was still a child, Claire had often lingered over her sleeping son, stroking his hair, inhaling the scent of warm linen and soap. He allowed so little contact between them now; she had almost forgotten what it was like to touch him and not have him automatically pull away. If only I could have you back again. She leaned over and kissed him on the eyebrow. He gave a moan and rolled over, turning his back to her. Even in his sleep, she thought, he pulls away from me.
She was about to rise to her feet when she suddenly froze, her gaze fixed on his pillow. On the streak of phosphorescent green where Noah’s face had rested against the linen.
In disbelief she touched the streak and felt moistness there, like the warm leavings of tears. She stared at the tips of her fingers.
They glimmered with spectral light in the darkness.
19
“I need to know what’s growing in that lake, Max. And I need to know today.”
Max gestured her into his cottage and shut the door against the bitter wind. “How is Noah this morning?”
“I examined him from head to toe, and he seems perfectly healthy except for a stuffed-up nose. I left him in bed with juice and decongestants.”
“And the phosphorescence? Did you culture it?”
“Yes. I sent the swab off right away.” She took off her coat. Max had finally been able to get a fire going in the woodstove, and the cottage felt stiflingly hot. She almost preferred the bone-chilling wind outside. In here, surrounded by Max’s clutter, the air hazy with smoke, she thought she might suffocate.
“I’ve just made coffee,” he said. “Have a seat—if you can find an empty chair.”
She took one glance around the claustrophobic room and followed him, instead, into the kitchen. “So tell me about those water culture results. The ones you took before the lake froze.”
“The report came back this morning.”
“Why didn’t you call me right away?”
“Because there was nothing much to report.” He shuffled through a stack of papers on the kitchen counter, and handed her a computer printout. “There. The final ID from the lab.”
She glanced down the long list of microorganisms. “I don’t recognize most of these,” she said.
“That’s because they’re not pathogens—they don’t cause disease in humans. What’s on that list are just the typical bacteria and algae you’d find in any northern freshwater pond. The coliform count is borderline high, which may indicate that someone’s septic system is leaking from the shoreline, or into one of the feeder streams. But overall, it’s an unremarkable bacterial spectrum.”
“No phosphorescent Vibrio?”
“No. If Vibrio was ever in that lake, then it didn’t survive very long, which makes it an unlikely source of disease. Most likely the Vibrio isn’t a pathogen, but an incidental bacteria. Harmless, like all the other bacteria we carry around in our bodies.”
She sighed. “That’s what the state health department told me.”
“You called them?”
“First thing this morning. I was in such a panic about Noah.”
He handed her a cup of coffee. She took one sip, then set it down, wondering if Max had used bottled water to brew it, or if he had unthinkingly drawn the water from the tap.
From the lake.
Her gaze drifted out the window, to the unbroken expanse of white that was Locust Lake. In so many ways, that wide body of water defined the everyday course of their lives. In summer they swam and bathed in its water, pulled struggling fish from its depths. In winter they glided over its surface on skates, insulated their homes against the merciless winds that howled across its ice. Without the lake, the Town of Tranquility would not exist, and this would be only another valley in a dark expanse of forest.
Her beeper went off. On the digital readout was a number she didn’t recognize, with a Bangor exchange.
She made the call from Max’s phone, and a nurse from Eastern Maine Medical Center answered.
“Dr. Rothstein asked us to call you, Dr. Elliot. It’s about that craniotomy patient you referred here last week, Mr. Emerson.”
“How’s Warren been doing since his surgery?”
“Well, the psychiatrist and the social worker have seen him several times, but nothing seems to be helping. That’s why we’re calling you. We thought, since he’s your patient, you might know how to handle this situation.”
“What situation?”
“Mr. Emerson refuses all his medications. Even worse, he’s stopped eating. All he’ll take now is water.”
“Does he give a reason?”
“Yes. He sa
ys it’s his time to die.”
Warren Emerson seemed to have shrunken since the last time she’d seen him, as though life itself was slowly leaking from him like air from a balloon. He sat in a chair by the window, his gaze focused on the parking lot below, where snow-covered cars were lined up like soft bread loaves. He did not turn to look at her when she walked into the room, but just kept staring out the window, a tired man bathed in the light of a gray day. She wondered if he realized she was there.
Then he said, “It doesn’t do any good, you know. So you might as well leave me alone. When your time comes, it comes.”
“But it isn’t your time yet, Mr. Emerson,” said Claire.
At last he turned, and if he was surprised to see her, he didn’t show it. She had the feeling he was beyond surprise. Beyond pleasure or pain. He watched with bland indifference as she crossed toward him.
“Your operation was a success,” she said. “They took out the brain mass, and the chances are, it’s benign. You have every hope of a complete recovery. A normal life.”
Her words seemed to have no effect on him. He simply turned back to the window. “A man like me can’t have a normal life.”
“But we can control the seizures. We might even be able to stop them from ever—”
“They’re all afraid of me.”
That statement, spoken with such resignation, explained everything. This was the malady for which there was no cure, from which he could never recover. She could offer no surgery that would resect the fear and revulsion his neighbors felt toward him.
“I see it in their eyes,” he said. “I see it whenever I pass them on the street, or brush against them in the grocery store. It’s like they’ve been burned by acid. No one will touch me. No one has touched me in thirty years. Only doctors and nurses. People who have no choice. I’m poison, you see. I’m dangerous. They all stay away, because they know I’m the town monster.”